You Le

Purple Butterfly is a film of dreamy realism, sometimes insoluble and suffused with a haze that is, at once, sepulchral yet sultry — a film about war and love, and the pain of both. It takes place in a constantly raining, Japanese-occupied Shanghai. (Critics compare the film to Wong Kar-wai, whose In the Mood for Love spawned innumerable progeny in the 2000s, and, while Lou obviously has different political and narrative sensibilities, his sumptuous conjuring of a bygone epoch is certainly redolent…